Design Research
Related work Super Studio 1, Super Studio 2, Super Studio 3 and Super Studio Blog/2007, 2008
Media design program at Art Center College of Design, offers a class called Super Studio, which is studying of design research. Every year, students are given a different topic. Last year, ours was ‘How streaming media and real-time media affect family's behavior, vocabulary, social interaction and perception of the world between parents and children.’
Research was starting with recruiting families in Los Angeles area and defining streaming media. We discussed and came up with a lot of questions and ideas to understand our topic. We built several Probes, which served as a research tool and we placed them into the families’ house to know them. After gathering stories from the Probes, we started to analyze and interpret them. It was a very unique and interesting process, and it is the most valuable part of the design research.
Probes
Visual interpretation of each family member
Second step was to get a deep understanding of families with Design Interventions, which were a kind of developed Probes. (The first probe showed that we needed to know more about the families, second one was more customized to understanding each family member). We interpreted and analyzed data, and based on that we built an ‘Interactive Dinner Table’. Through the table, families in different places could interact and communicate with each other thought sound and small screens, which were placed above the table. We could find interesting results like their perception of the space, table manners, ways of communication, and the inner voice which was not shown before.
Family 2 - Final Table Documentation from Kylan Coats on Vimeo.